Title (Max 100 Characters)

The Kaiser Permanente hospitals in South Sacramento and Roseville have been named 2012 Leapfrog Top Hospitals, an honor that rewards medical centers for outstanding success in such areas as the use of electronic health records to reduce medication and other errors, performance on high-risk surgical procedures, low infection rates, and appropriate physician and nursing staffing.

Eight other Kaiser Permanente hospitals in Northern California received the honor. In all, just 92 hospitals around the country were named Top Hospitals, out of more than 1,200 surveyed.

“Being named a Top Hospital by the Leapfrog Group is a real testament to our team of highly skilled physicians and staff, who every day put the patient at the center of everything we do at our South Sacramento Medical Center,” said Patricia Rodriguez, area manager and senior vice president, South Sacramento. “This is our third Top Hospital award and we are so proud to be able to provide our patients and the South Sacramento community with safe, high-quality care.”

South Sacramento Medical Center also received the Top Hospital award in 2009 and 2011.

“We are honored to be recognized among an impressive list of the nation’s top hospitals for meeting and exceeding high standards in the way we care for our patients,” said Edward Glavis, area manager and senior vice president, Roseville. “Our highly skilled physicians, nurses and staff are dedicated to improving the lives and health of our patients, and being named a Top Hospital is a reflection of that hard work.”

This is Roseville Medical Center’s third Top Hospital award in a row by the Leapfrog Group.

“Leapfrog is the gold standard for hospital quality and this recognition reflects the exceptional performance of our hospitals, but that’s only part of the Kaiser Permanente story,” said Robert Pearl, MD, executive director and CEO of The Permanente Medical Group. “Our physicians, nurses and staff are able to provide continuous excellence from the outpatient to the inpatient setting and back through personalized, technologically advanced and closely coordinated care across all specialties. Having experts available from every specialty in the hospital and utilizing the most advanced electronic medical record allows physicians to provide their patients rapid, cutting-edge diagnosis and treatment. The result is lower mortality rates from heart attacks, strokes, cancer and sepsis than the rest of the country, and a dramatically reduced chance of our patients having to be re-hospitalized.”

The other Kaiser Permanente Northern California Top Hospitals in 2012 are:

Antioch

Richmond

San Francisco

Santa Clara

South San Francisco

Vacaville

Vallejo

Walnut Creek

“This is a transformative time for health care, and Kaiser Permanente is the model for the future,” said Gregory A. Adams, president of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan/Hospitals, Inc., in Northern California. “Our ultimate goal is to provide our patients with the right care in the right setting, and while the Leapfrog Group has recognized our hospitals as among the best in the nation, that setting is not always inside the hospital. We are improving the care we provide our patients and implementing evidence-based practices, which means they are recovering more quickly and going home sooner than they might have been able in the past – and in some cases, avoiding hospitalization all together.”

The Leapfrog Group is a coalition of public and private purchasers of employee health coverage founded a decade ago to work for improvements in health care safety, quality and affordability. It is an independent advocacy group working with a broad range of partners, including hospitals and insurers. The annual survey is the only voluntary effort of its kind.

The 2012 list of Top Hospitals includes university and other teaching hospitals, children’s hospitals and community hospitals in rural, suburban and urban settings. The selection is based on the results of the Leapfrog Group’s annual hospital survey, which measures hospitals’ performance on patient safety and quality, focusing on three critical areas of hospital care: how patients fare, resource use, and management structures in place to prevent errors. The results of the survey are posted on a website open to patients and families, the public, employers, and other purchasers of health care. The website is http://www.leapfroggroup.org/cp

Leapfrog also updated its hospital safety scores released earlier this year. In all, 17 of Kaiser Permanente’s 21 hospitals in Northern California received “A” grades, the highest possible. One received a “B” grade, and the remainder were not graded because they lacked sufficient volume in several measures used in the scoring.